College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Front Public Health. 2024 Aug 13;12:1411345. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1411345. eCollection 2024.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a widespread public health and financial crisis. The rapid vaccine development generated extensive discussions in both mainstream and social media, sparking optimism in the global financial markets. This study aims to explore the key themes from mainstream media's coverage of COVID-19 vaccines on Facebook and examine how public interactions and responses on Facebook to mainstream media's posts are associated with daily stock prices and trade volume of major vaccine manufacturers.
We obtained mainstream media's coverage of COVID-19 vaccines and major vaccine manufacturers on Facebook from CrowdTangle, a public insights tool owned and operated by Facebook, as well as the corresponding trade volume and daily closing prices from January 2020 to December 2021. Structural topic modelling was used to analyze social media posts while regression analysis was conducted to determine the impact of Facebook reactions on stock prices and trade volume.
10 diverse topics ranging from vaccine trials and their politicization (note: check that we use American spelling throughout), to stock market discussions were found to evolve over the pandemic. Although Facebook reactions were not consistently associated with vaccine manufacturers' stock prices, 'Haha' and 'Angry' reactions showed the strongest association with stock price fluctuations. In comparison, social media reactions had little observable impact on trading volume.
Topics generated reflect both actual events during vaccine development as well as its political and economic impact. The topics generated in this study reflect both the actual events surrounding vaccine development and its broader political and economic impact. While we anticipated a stronger correlation, our findings suggest a limited relationship between emotional reactions on Facebook and vaccine manufacturers' stock prices and trading volume. We also discussed potential technical enhancements for future studies, including the integration of large language models.
COVID-19 大流行引发了广泛的公共卫生和金融危机。快速疫苗的开发在主流媒体和社交媒体上引发了广泛的讨论，为全球金融市场带来了乐观情绪。本研究旨在探索主流媒体对 COVID-19 疫苗的报道在 Facebook 上的主要主题，并研究 Facebook 上公众对主流媒体帖子的互动和反应如何与主要疫苗制造商的每日股价和交易量相关联。
我们从 Facebook 拥有和运营的公共洞察工具 CrowdTangle 中获取了主流媒体对 COVID-19 疫苗和主要疫苗制造商的报道，以及 2020 年 1 月至 2021 年 12 月期间的相应交易量和每日收盘价。我们使用结构主题建模来分析社交媒体帖子，同时进行回归分析以确定 Facebook 反应对股价和交易量的影响。
发现 10 个不同的主题，从疫苗试验及其政治化（注意：检查我们在整个过程中使用美式拼写）到股票市场讨论，在大流行期间不断演变。尽管 Facebook 反应并不始终与疫苗制造商的股价相关，但“哈哈”和“愤怒”反应与股价波动的关联最强。相比之下，社交媒体反应对交易量几乎没有可观察到的影响。
生成的主题反映了疫苗开发过程中的实际事件及其政治和经济影响。本研究生成的主题反映了疫苗开发过程中的实际事件及其更广泛的政治和经济影响。虽然我们预计会有更强的相关性，但我们的发现表明 Facebook 上的情绪反应与疫苗制造商的股价和交易量之间的关系有限。我们还讨论了未来研究的潜在技术增强，包括大型语言模型的整合。
